Despite the excitement generated among the British hard left by the election of Jeremy Corbyn to lead the Labour Party, trade union influence has over the past two decades been on the wane throughout most of the Western world. And as in most of the developing world, it has not fared at all well in…

The discussion documents that have recently been released by the ANC in preparation for its national general council in October reveal renewed intention to have a serious discussion and reflection on a number of key issues, which if unresolved, can accelerate the demise of the organisation. In reality the fundamental question is about what is…

By Dr John Lamola Stephen Ellis’s approach in the brouhaha that has followed the SACP’s December 10 2013 statement that Nelson Mandela was a member of its central committee when he was captured in August 1962 exposes the enormity of the implications of this claim of the SACP. It places the matter within the context…

The ancient Chinese thinker Confucius is reputed to have said: “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper names.” At the risk of inviting the vitriol that attracts calling things by their proper names, I will testify, hopefully not in a kangaroo court, that the SACP’s statement of December 11 2013 which…

It’s on, it’s cootchy-coo. No, it’s off, it’s divorce. Monitoring South Africa’s governing alliance is a bit like watching a low-grade soapie starring a fractious married couple. Or more accurately, an eternally bickering ménage à trois, with two parties always ganging up on the third, but with loyalties shifting constantly. Sometimes it is the African…

According to Thomas Jefferson, we have four years to go. He wrote to James Madison in 1789: “Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years.” He had some funny ideas; let’s leave it at that. Constitution writing has improved since the days of America’s “founding fathers”, the process described in…

Communism, as formulated by Germans Marx and Engels in their industrialised continent far from the African situation, is seminally Eurocentric. When the South African Communist Party was founded by white, middle class manufacturers and merchants, disproportionately Jewish, Soviet leaders felt blacks weren’t yet advanced enough for Communism. During the 1921 Rand Revolt, the communists were…